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EIDE to EIDE CDR BURNING

im considering buying a 4x EIDE CDR from Mitsumi. I do not have SCSI and im running an older p-120. My question is, is EIDE to EIDE burning reliable? I do not want to spend $250 on something that im only going to have headaches with. Say im going to direct copy form CD to CD with EIDE is this any good? Any help is appreciated. If at all possible could you email me your replys? gentryr@planetc.com or ICQ me #1929179. I will forget about this site and not read the replies otherwise. THANKS

You would PROBABLY be able to get away with it, depending on the speed of your CDROM drive. If you have a slow CD-ROM, it's a risky chance to take. Especially since you're running it on a P120, any additional overhead would give you a nice coaster.

Basically, if your CD-ROM is fast enough to handle it then you should be able to do it. But I seriously recommend killing ALL programs before trying.

To give you a guide, I have an IDE 2x writer and I made a few CD to CD copies on my old P90 computer. However, on that machine it was far more reliable to create an image of the CD onto the hard drive and then burn onto the CD using the hard drive as the source. You have a faster computer and hopefully a faster CD-ROM drive, so you should be able to handle 2x speed fine.

If 4x doesn't work, remember you can always turn it down to 2x speed. 2x writing CD to CD is probably faster than capturing the CD to hard disk and then burning at 4x, because of the hassle and extra steps u have to go through. Besides, stick it on at 2x and come back in half an hour, you don't have to hang around waiting to set the thing going again after 10 minutes.

writing at 4x from the hard disk should work fine though. It's your choice, if the 4x isn't too much more expensive than the 2x then go for it definitely. You can always plug in a faster CDROM or a faster CPU later on, they're pretty cheap.

BTW, I moved my IDE writer to this computer which is a K6-2 350. It has a 36x CDROM and CD to CD works perfectly. So IDE CDROM to IDE CD-Writer works fine, you just have to have a system that can handle it (btw, mine is definitely overkill for burning CDs. CPU usage is only about 20% burning CD to CD so it'll work on a much slower system than mine!!)

Try factoring in the time it takes to copy a whole CD to the hard disk and THEN burn it. It's much faster and much less hassle if you can get a CD to CD copy working. You may *just* break in front if you can copy to HD and burn at 4x, but only do CD to CD at 2x. But the difference is small and it's much more hassle to copy to HD first, plus you need a lot of free disk space. Concentrate on getting CD to CD working.

Simple solution: scrabble a couple of bucks together and buy a faster CPU that will work in your motherboard. second hand, whatever. it'll give you some more breathing room and make sure you can do CD to CD at 4x (assuming your CDROM is fast enough).